Day Thirty-One: True Blood

TRUE BLOOD

Starring:
-Anna Paquin
-Stephen Moyer


I saw the Twilight movie. I was unimpressed. But if anything can win me over to Team Vampire, it’s True Blood. True Blood is the new(ish) HBO series about vampires coming out of the coffin all across America, including tiny Louisiana hick town Bon Temps (warning: you will get sick of hearing everybody say the words ‘Bon Temps.’ That’s a guarantee).

Sookie Stackhouse (Paquin) is a telepathic barmaid with a redneck brother, a self-righteous best friend, a vampire boyfriend (Moyer), a shape shifter boss who’s in love with her, and a gap-toothed grin. You might think this girl has all she needs to live creepily ever after, but you would be wrong. Instead, she’s forced to deal with the issues of all her annoying friends and relatives. Eventually, those issues manifest themselves into a cold-blooded serial killer who’s after every single mortal who has any connections with those lusty bloodsuckers. Sookie handles this well, although she does lose both her cat and her grandmother to the cause. I mean they don’t become vampires or anything. They just die gruesome deaths.

Yes, Sookie gets tired of all the drama, but thankfully she has Vampire Bill to see her through and keep her safe… as long as the sun isn’t up. You see, unlike those wimpy Twilight vampires who can stroll around all they want with their sparkly diamond skin, the True Blood vampires are hardcore. They will eat you, but only as long as the sun is down.

I don’t understand why they have to hole up underground all day, though. Most of these vampires are pretty rich, so seems to me they could afford to have like an underground bunker home built. With a swimming pool and Internet access and everything. Why is it they have to lie in their coffins all day when they could be playing Wii?

Coincidentally, while my spell check system will automatically recognize the words “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” and “Wiki”, it isn’t quite hip to the term “Wii.” But I know it’s only a matter of time.

Back to the vampires. I read the first book (written by that Harris woman whose first name I can never remember. Charlaine, maybe?) and couldn’t believe how this woman just threw everything but the kitchen sink into the book. I don’t necessarily mean that in a good way, either. There were so many subplots and so much drama that it pulled me out of the story a little bit. I just had to stop occasionally and think “Seriously? All this has happened to Sookie in her short life? And Elvis lives?” I don’t think so.

Since this is an HBO baby, I’m sure you’ve already guessed that there is a lot of sex involved here. We’re talking tons. If I remember correctly, there is at least one romantic encounter (one night stands included) per episode, which tends to make me bitter that these fictional characters are getting more play in an hour long episode than I have in the last six months. Such is the nature of escapist television.

Mixed in with all of this is the underlying message: gay people are awesome and deserve the right to get married. That may not be the main message of the Harris woman’s books, but that is certainly the direction the show is taking things in. So if you’re staunchly conservative (and easily riled up) about the whole gay marriage thing, you’ll probably be annoyed by all the thinly veiled gay rights messages.

I like gay people. I also like married people. And if gay people want to be married people, it’s no skin off my nose. The important thing to remember here is that I hate being lectured about the topic… from either side. I don’t want to hear a sermon about the horrors of gay marriage from the pulpit, and I certainly don’t want a sermon from the True Blood writers about the horrors of those who oppose their platform.

Can’t we all just get along? Think about this…gay marriage means gay weddings. Lots of them. Lots of weddings involve lots of cake. Where, exactly, is the down side?

Off in search of cake from either orientation,

M.